Transness as insecurity: Anti-trans movements and the security politics of reproduction

Abstract This article analyses the security politics of opposition to trans rights in the United States and United Kingdom. It argues that opponents of ‘gender ideology’ view transness as a threat to reproductive ability and therefore as a threat to national, societal and/or racial reproduction. Anti-trans movements articulate reproductive dis/ability along lines of gender, age and race, with an overwhelming focus on (what they imagine as) white girls’ developmental capacity for biologized motherhood, and white men’s developed genital size and sexual appetite. The article first develops an analytic framework combining Alison Howell’s account of global health security with queer, feminist and Trans Studies scholarship on reproductive nationalism. It then outlines a history of transatlantic security politics surrounding reproduction, showing that today’s moral panic extends a long lineage. Turning to contemporary anti-trans movements, the article argues that these approach children’s and/or feminized bodies as sites of national, racial and/or societal security, in need of defence against invasive, reproductively disabling, or racially degenerate trans threats. Overall, the article argues, opposition to transness exposes the broader security politics of reproduction, not least how these configure race, gender and age with dis/ability and health.